COVER PAGE

PRAISE

PRAISE FOR BEN SANDERS

American Blood

‘For lovers of Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne there is a new gun in town—a noble loner called Marshall Grade with a blazing gun and burning desire to right wrongs. Whatever happens, I want him on my side.’ —Michael Robotham, double Gold Dagger–winning author of Life or Death

‘From the opening page American Blood hits the road running and the pace does not let up as the story races through a series of shoot-outs, and some neat twists, to a bloody conclusion. Highly recommended.’ —Canberra Times

‘Sanders’ prose is sharper than a switchblade. Hard-boiled action, gritty dialogue, characters steeped in a demi-monde of sleaze and worse—it’s like Raymond Chandler, Lee Child, and Elmore Leonard rolled into one.’ —Sydney Morning Herald

‘Ben Sanders’ American Blood is an intense, action-packed crime novel that smoothly unspools the background of its enigmatic lead character.’ —Associated Press

‘A fast-moving thriller that leaves a trail of blood and grit across the pages. Great dialogue and a hero who won’t stay hidden make this a winner for crime fans.’ —Kirkus, starred review

‘… here is an adrenaline-laced thriller ready to grab readers and take them on a wild ride … An excellent read for crime and thriller fans.’ —stuff.co.nz

‘Jack Reacher meets Jason Bourne in this explosive new thriller from a fresh voice in crime fiction … American Blood will have you riveted.’ —Good Reading

Marshall’s Law

‘Pure Elmore Leonard … the opening scene is as vivid as it gets. Marshall’s Law is a star turn by an author carrying the Leonard baton in style.’ —Canberra Times

‘Sanders’s novel is scenically arranged … [dialogue is] handled with a droll, dark wit. Bloody but choreographed with flair. [Sanders’] career ought to have a long way to run.’ —The Australian

‘Take Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Nelson DeMille, put them through a sausage machine and you get Ben Sanders … [Marshall’s Law] is a gripping, hold-on-to-your-hats ride—with a wacky cast of likeable ne’er-do-wells working their own angles—that will leave you wanting more.’ —Daily Telegraph

The Stakes

‘A clever, fast-paced and undemanding read … Ben Sanders appears to be having a lot of fun with the thriller genre.’ —Sydney Morning Herald

‘Good people go bad just to make a decent living in another taut and terrific tale from the torch bearer for fans of the great Elmore Leonard.’ —The Advertiser

‘… there’s much to enjoy here: razor sharp dialogue, sly humour, head-swivelling action and a superb sense of place. Sanders’ New York is gritty and tactile; train fumes, trash and iron squeals. The result is a cinematic, testosterone-heavy read for fans of street-smart, hard-boiled crime.’ —New Zealand Herald

‘Fast-paced, full of suspense and a storyline that is all too plausible, Ben Sanders’ latest thriller makes for a great read that once begun, will be seriously hard to put down.’ —Blue Wolf Reviews

DEDICATION

Dedicated to the memory of my grandmother Ray McKitterick.

Pass Quinny the mustard.

ONE

ONE

Before the shooting and everything else that happened, Vincent’s only problem was that Freeman didn’t like him. He imagined the main issue was that he didn’t seem like a bodyguard. He knew they’d had protection before, and no doubt Freeman had formed a view on what people in the trade were supposed to look like. Vincent was pretty sure that he didn’t fit the mould.

At the very least, he’d come across well on day one: new suit, new shoes, new sunglasses. Freeman had seemed impressed, which was to say he didn’t exhibit any overt signs of disapproval. Freeman was one of those guys whose deportment, in Vincent’s view, overstepped ‘professional’ and erred toward ‘prim and chilly’. Vincent had the feeling that even if he worked here for ten or fifteen years, there wouldn’t come a day when they’d have a drink together. Something about him—something about Freeman in his fitted suit with the coat buttoned, pocket square matching his tie, chin up to aim his gaze down his nose—Vincent just couldn’t see him in a deckchair with his feet on the rail, sipping beer between chuckles.

The house was up on Mountain Drive, in the hills behind Santa Barbara. He thought ‘palatial’ was the right term, though you wouldn’t know it from the street. Once they’d buzzed you in via the intercom, you came in off the sidewalk through a wooden door made to look weathered—strips of rusty steel framing splintered timber like old railway sleepers—and into a little courtyard big on botany: vines everywhere, and heady with the scent of flowers. Then in through the front door, and the view hit you. The far end of the living room was all windows, the hills beyond receding gently, contours smoothing as the land scooped down to meet the water.

It was Freeman who’d let him in on that first day, and he greeted Vincent with a handshake as firm and dry as a dentist’s. There was another guy sitting on a couch by the windows, reading the New Yorker. This was one of the few times he’d actually seen the New Yorker being read, and definitely the first time he’d seen it being read by a man with a Glock on his hip.

Freeman led him to an office off the living area and shut the door behind them.

‘Have a seat. Would you like a drink?’

There was a boardroom table with seating for ten—nothing on it but a slim manila folder and a business card that read M CASEY FREEMAN—PA TO EUGENE LAMAR. Vincent took the chair opposite the paperwork and asked for water. There was a dry bar in the corner, but eleven am was probably too early to make use of it. He wondered if the question was a test—check he’d make a responsible decision.

‘Ice? Sparkling?’

‘No ice. Tap water’s fine. Thanks.’

Freeman came back a minute later with his drink and a napkin, placed them down carefully—napkin as coaster, the glass centred—and then took his seat.

They waited, looking at each other across the table, and Vincent got the feeling he’d need to take a sip to get things moving.

He did so, and Freeman said, ‘Your résumé looked good.’

‘Thank you.’

He wasn’t quite sure how to go from there. The way Freeman was looking at him, expression neutral and holding his eye, Vincent figured he was supposed to come in with some exposition and self-reverence, run through his background and explain how he was just the man for the job. He guessed Freeman was about fifty: even tan, thin grey hair trimmed and gelled into uniform compliance, the bearing and posture of a yoga adherent. The combined effect was an unspoken imperative that said, Impress me.

Problem was, Vincent hadn’t worked for six months, and there was a big part of him quite happy to extend the holiday. Only reason he was here was because of a drink he’d had last week with Beauden Ash in LA. Beauden was a senior partner now at Bluesmoke. He’d told Vincent they needed a contractor for a gig in Santa Barbara, just a temporary thing for a couple of months. High pay, low stress, and Vincent would be doing them a massive favour.

Okay, fine.

He agreed to an interview. But now he was actually sitting here doing the thing, he realised he didn’t have a lot to say. He didn’t want to get into the finer details of his past employment, and he certainly didn’t want to talk about the crash. Beauden had asked about it, obviously, and Vincent had given him the basics: the helicopter taking fire and then spinning, the rotations cranking up until the whole craft was in a fairground twirl, and Vincent was the only one to make it out when it hit the ground. By luck or prescience, he’d been out of his harness and on his feet, and therefore took the impact through his knees, which meant two broken legs and a dislocated shoulder from falling sideways. Everyone else got a broken spine on touchdown—or so he was informed afterward. Nothing they could do but sit there, even if they were still breathing.

Freeman opened the file and laid the pages out side-by-side. There were only two of them: the cover letter from Bluesmoke, and his exit form from the State Department. Vincent thought the State Department people could actually write a pretty good letter when they wanted to—the way they outlined his operational specialty without saying a lot, leaving far more between the lines than in the printed text.

Freeman seemed to get the gist of it, anyway. He waved the letter gently, like the weight of the paper would help him take the measure of the man. He said, ‘Your role here will have two components. Principally, you’ll maintain security of the property, and you’ll also serve as driver for Mr Lamar. We’d prefer this to be a twenty-four–hour position. There’s self-contained accommodation on the ground floor.’

‘All right.’

Freeman said, ‘We’ll give you the tour, obviously. But do you have any questions at this point?’

No, he didn’t really, even though the guy hadn’t told him much. Bluesmoke had given him the background. Eugene Lamar had made his money from supermarkets, and he had no law-enforcement flags. But Vincent was distracted, slightly, by Freeman’s business card. What he’d like to know was if the M stood for Morgan. Vincent presumed the man would find it pretty irksome, being told all the time that Morgan Freeman was a movie star. It would dent your sense of self-accomplishment, having a name made famous by someone else.

He said, ‘Who else is on the property?’

‘Myself and Mr Lamar are here fulltime. There’s a gardener, but he’s only here two days per week.’

‘What about security?’

‘It’s a staff of one, and our previous man retired last month.’ Freeman smiled tightly. ‘Mr Lamar would like a replacement sooner rather than later.’

Vincent said, ‘Does the gardener carry?’

‘Excuse me?’

Vincent tilted his head. ‘Just curious about the guy in the living room.’

Freeman said, ‘Mr Lamar’s daughter is visiting. She has her own security.’

Vincent hadn’t heard anything about a daughter. ‘Has she been threatened, or does she just like having back-up?’

‘Ms Jones is a public figure, and I understand that necessitated the protection. You’d need to discuss the specifics with her or Mr Lamar.’

‘And what about Mr Lamar? Has he ever been threatened?’

Freeman said, ‘Not that I’m aware of. Though I’m sure Mr Lamar can apprise you of relevant details. Should there be any.’

He wasn’t qualifying anything with ‘if you get the job’. It sounded like the decision had been made before he got here. So Vincent said, ‘I’d like thirty-five hundred a week. I’m happy to chauffeur, but I won’t carry a gun. Hopefully someone’s mentioned that already.’

Freeman nodded. ‘Your caveat was explained to us.’ He was quiet a moment, letting Vincent know that it was less than ideal. ‘There are firearms in the house. You’ll need to know where they are, obviously, but you don’t need to have one with you.’

‘Great.’

‘But you can discuss all of that with Mr Lamar.’ He smiled curtly.

‘Sure. Shall we bring him in, then?’

Freeman’s eyebrows went up a fraction, as if certain verbs were unfit for the man in question, and ‘bring’ was one of them. He said, ‘I’ll see if Mr Lamar is available.’

Turned out he was.

Vincent waited at the table while Freeman went to inquire, and when the door opened again, it was Lamar who entered first. Vincent stood up from the table with his sunglasses back on, thinking he’d seem more polite if the man saw him take them off, make an effort with his eye contact. It had been one of his father’s rules. Driving private cabs as a teenager for his old man, ferrying Mafioso around Bensonhurst and greater Brooklyn, Vincent could wear shades when he was at the wheel, but he was forbidden to greet a client at the kerb without letting them see eyeball.

So with that edict in mind he held out one hand to shake and held his sunglasses in the other and said, ‘Nice to meet you. I’m Vincent.’

Lamar was seventy or so. He looked about right for a supermarket millionaire, albeit one who shopped only in the health-food aisles. He was a short guy, square and still well built, just starting to go paunchy. Thick white hair combed straight back, and a goatee tethered to his face by a little thread of a moustache. He took Vincent’s hand with both of his own, and then suddenly looked worried.

He said, ‘You play golf?’

Vincent said, ‘No. But I can caddy.’

Lamar nodded, jutting his lower jaw, let Vincent have his hand back. ‘That’ll be fine. Casey, I’m liking him already.’

Freeman managed a nod, too.

Lamar put his hands on his hips and said, ‘We’d better give you the tour. Any questions yet?’

He thought about asking whether they had guns in the house because Lamar was fond of the Second Amendment, or because the supermarket business was more dangerous than people might think. But all of that would come later. Right now, the impression he got was that they were close to offering him a job, so why hold them up? And having looked at that ocean view for twenty minutes, he could appreciate that there were far worse places to be employed for a couple of months. The part of him that said Never Work Again was willing to capitulate.

So he just looked at Freeman and said, ‘Is your first name Morgan?’

And Freeman said, ‘Good guess.’

TWO

TWO

If he hadn’t put three guys in the hospital, there would have been no need to come out to California in the first place.

Six months back, he was still in New York, living in a rent-controlled place up in Yonkers, and pretty content with his life. He had a job on a new apartment building in Williamsburg, down by the water—part of this hipster-gentrification movement whereby what used to be riverfront industry was being slowly transformed into the kind of area where guys who wore little hats liked to buy coffee.

He worked five days on and two off, and enjoyed the predictability of it. The past fifteen years, he’d been all over the world and never really experienced what might be considered a normal routine—at least not for any extended period. So, the anodyne was actually a novelty. He liked taking the bus down through Harlem in the morning, the streets looking bruised and glum, and then the 6 Train to Union Square and the short ride across to Brooklyn on the L, the train wild-fast on that short stretch beneath the river and the pressure so great it made his ears pop.

The other guys on the job called him The Librarian. Vincent understood this as a reproach for his break-time habit. What he liked about this new life—normal life—was he could be out in the world and not be hyper-vigilant. Relaxation didn’t seem to attract any kind of existential risk, and so he’d set himself the task of getting through Philip Roth’s Zuckerman books. His colleagues seemed to regard this as some kind of show of elitism—or at least a grab at the bottom rung of the white-collar ladder. The problem was, the principal theme of job-talk seemed to be gross insults, generally directed toward wives or girlfriends or mothers, and typically sexual in nature. Vincent decided he was better off with Phil.

If he’d had no friends, he could have avoided trouble completely. But there were a few people on the job he got along with, one of whom was this guy Billy Ellis, who lived only a few blocks up from him in Yonkers. Vincent had been going in his front door one evening and heard a shout of, ‘Librarian!’—turned around and there was Billy riding past in the back of an old Plymouth, grin on his face and a finger aimed at Vincent through the open window.

Billy was a black guy from Alabama, up here by way of New Orleans, having moved down after Katrina to help with the re-build. What was intended as a short visit turned into a nine-year stay. Then, two months back he suddenly felt like a change, and here he was: New York City. Vincent got the feeling the simple story was hiding some interesting details, and after a few weeks on the job he began to wonder if trouble had something to do with Billy’s move.

A couple of times now Vincent had seen this old Cadillac DeVille pull up by the construction fence along the road. The driver was a ratty-looking white guy in his forties who’d sit there with the window open, arm along the sill and acting grim, trying to let people know he could make a handful of himself if required. Vincent thought it was an interesting contrast: the car polished to a shine, looking like it just rolled off the lot, and the driver a similar vintage but not faring nearly as well.

The passenger in the Cadillac was a black guy of about three-hundred pounds, big enough that he looked like he had a life ring on under his shirt. His job, as far as Vincent could tell, was to get out and perform a little dance behind the car, headphones on to help him with the beat. He had rhythm, definitely: he’d lay down a few slow moves with his eyes shut—little shoulder jerks, maybe a few tight turns on the balls of his feet—while the driver practised his stare and smoked a cigarette. It would only take a few minutes for Billy Ellis to see them and go over, and he and the other black man would talk through the fence, and then the two guys from the DeVille would drive off, and Billy would come back on the job looking worried. The second time it happened, Vincent asked him what the problem was, but Billy just waved him off, said it wasn’t library business. Fair enough. But the third time Vincent saw the DeVille was the following Monday, and that’s when he decided Billy Ellis had a problem.

Vincent was up on level four, drilling holes in a concrete lift shaft wall. The holes were supposed to be formed during casting, but for whatever reason they weren’t, and for whatever reason, it fell to Vincent to remediate the error. The drill weighed fifteen pounds, and the holes were specified as six inches deep at five-inch centres, two inches off the steel tray he was standing on, and there were fifty-two lineal feet of wall to cover. Each goddamned hole had to be drilled and then vacuumed—the dust could undermine a competent epoxy bond on the rebar or something—and thirty minutes in he wasn’t sure if it was the actual labour he’d performed or the mental burden of the work that still awaited him, but his back was killing him. He was only five months out of the hospital following the helicopter crash, and six weeks out of the physical rehab program, and he was pretty sure his current activity wasn’t obeying the VA doctor’s admonishment to take it easy.

He stood up and stretched against the safety rail, trying to fix the ache, and when he looked down he saw the DeVille turn in off the street into the yard. That was different: before now, the car had always stayed at the fence. Vincent had a funny feeling that maybe four floors up was a good place to be right now. And already the brain department responsible for self-preservation was telling him This Is Not Your Problem. He had to think about that, though, because why would that instinct engage, were it not for the fact that Billy Ellis needed a hand?

He grabbed his coat and trotted down the temporary stairs, heard a shout from behind him that the holes wouldn’t get done unless he actually picked up the drill. Some other insult drowned out by the banshee scream of a saw, and he leaned out past the level-three safety rail and saw the DeVille with its rear door open, Billy Ellis standing there talking to someone on the back seat. At this height he looked more vulnerable—the tight, downward angle shrinking him from grown man to child. Like a street kid beckoned by some candy-toting weirdo.

The freight elevator was occupied. Vincent took the stairs down to level two and crossed the slab to the corner nearest the DeVille, put one leg and then the other across the safety rail. The corner column was a steel I-section, and he gripped the outside flange with his gloved hands and clamped his boots either side and slid down two floors to the ground. The jolt made his bad knee dip, and he stumbled briefly walking toward the DeVille.

‘Billy!’

Billy Ellis glanced over, but it didn’t stop him getting in the car. The door closed, and the DeVille reversed out onto the street and pulled away.

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